Sakuya Izayoi
“Your time is mine. Well, it'd be nice if you had something else besides time, but..." General Information Sakuya first appeared as the Stage 5 boss in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. She appeared in Perfect Cherry Blossom as a playable character and in Imperishable Night as Remilia's partner along with being in the new fighting game Immaterial and Missing Power. Later, she appeared again as a playable character in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and in Touhou Hisoutensoku. She was a playable character once again in Double Dealing Character. She essentially takes the position of managing the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Her height is tall; she is taller than Reimu Hakureiand Alice Margatroid but about the same height as Yukari Yakumo and Meiling. She was not born in Gensokyo, and the name "Sakuya Izayoi" was given to her by Remilia Scarlet. In Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, Akyuu guessed that she might have originally been a vampire hunter. Personality Sakuya tends to be a little spacy, but it's unknown if its just an act. Her behaviour is that of an easy-going person and, although her personality can be seen as perfectly elegant, she possesses a little deviation that she is extra cautious about: inability to eat hot foods. From the dictionary, elegance means "refined, graceful". Refined means "cultured in manners and taste, as well as appearance" and Graceful means "sensible, sophisticated, neat, and without filth". She uses humble speech to her mistress Remilia Scarlet and friend Patchouli Knowledge, and uses less formal speech to other people. Abilities Sakuya possesses the ability to manipulate time, where she's able to control the flow of time, such as speeding up time, slowing it down, erasing it, and stopping time altogether. She can also compress the flow of time to make both past and future to exist at the same time, making the same object from different timelines be in many places simultaneously. The extent of her ability lets her not only control the time of the place in which she is, but influence the flow of time of a person, a specific object or even a small zone if she so desires, such as stopping the time of an object and thus affecting the space, making it stand still on thin air or creating time suspension fields where everything inside them will be affected by her ability; she can also accelerate or decelerate the movement of objects from slowed down speed to incredibly high speed, to even reaching the speed of light, making it move at tremendous speed. However, as it is difficult to reverse events that have already occurred, and since she is not able to return broken things to how they were originally even if she reversed time, in reality, it is not possible to reverse time. However, she is able to do things to the extent of moving things back to where they were originally. She has shown the ability to erase time of an object from a respective timeline; such as erasing bullets of the present and then the future, making them non-existent. She is also able to manipulate space, and can narrow or lengthen it: she made the Scarlet Devil Mansion, which was originally spacious, even more abundantly spacious, and furthermore just like this she cleans alone. ZUN also said that "Manipulation of Time" is synonymous with "Manipulation of Space" (as it's well-known space and time are related as a 4-dimensional Lorentzian space within a pseudo-Riemannian manifold). By manipulating space-time, Sakuya is able to create parallel universes to some degree of extent, allowing her to make another Sakuya appear in front of her, which will execute a different action to that of the original, and thus creating a time paradox. According to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, the power to control time is a power that a human can possibly have, but isn't acquired just from just training. In the games, using this ability, she scatters an infinite quantity of knives. To disclose the secret of this trick, she stops time and assiduously collects the knives. Hieda no Akyuu believes Sakuya has managed to live so long while still looking like a teenager by manipulating time. It's true that Sakuya can increase the speed at which something ages, such as making bamboo flowers bloom instantly in Marisa's A ending of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, even though this would normally take sixty years. It seems safe enough to assume she can decelerate aging for a specific object, too. She possesses a great amount of silver throwing knives and is skilled at handling them, and with only her ability to manipulate time, she is skilled in conjuring knives from nowhere. Story ZUN has stated in his e-mails that Sakuya is not her real name and that she is not from Gensokyo. According to her profile in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, her power to control time distanced her from humans, and she eventually gave up trying to be friendly with them. It is unknown how she came to work for the Scarlet Devil Mansion. During Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Sakuya attempts to prevent the heroine from reaching her mistress, but fails. Later, during Perfect Cherry Blossom, Sakuya is able to show more of her true character, even if her main reason for trying to solve the problem is that the delayed Spring will affect her too. Sakuya wants no distractions and to quickly find the culprit, unfortunately for her, she gets into a full fledged adventure. Relationships Residents of the Scarlet Devil Mansion Sakuya is loyal to Remilia Scarlet and serves her as the Head Maid without question, a servitude in which no one knows why either trust each other so much. She follows Remilia's requests even when she knows it won't work, such as catching Lily Whiteto restore Spring in Strange and Bright Nature Deity, as requested by her mistress. When Remilia playfully criticizes Sakuya for her failure to catch spring, she takes it in good stride and doesn't disagree. She will also do things for Remilia which she won't even ask, like accompanying her in Imperishable Night and Immaterial and Missing Power (or trying to, in the latter case), or putting on a sleight-of-hand magic show for Remilia without warning in Curiosities of Lotus Asia. Remilia has said that Sakuya is an excellent cleaner, though not before contrarily stating that humans are useless. On occasion, she's more a babysitter than a maid. She chastises Remilia in her Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and Immaterial and Missing Power victory quotes for sneaking out food or playing around too much. Meiling is a fellow employee who she pesters about her work productivity as shown in Immaterial and Missing Power and Touhou Hisoutensoku victory quotes. Meiling seems easily frightened when Sakuya shows even a slight bit of anger as shown in Strange and Bright Nature Deity. However, in Meiling's Touhou Hisoutensoku ending, when Meiling is found passed out and asleep, Sakuya takes Meiling inside because she is worried Meiling will get heatstroke. She also serves Patchouli Knowledge since Patchouli rarely leaves her room. Sakuya has the highest authority as chief maid, yet Patchouli's rank is noticeably higher within the Scarlet Devil Mansion. Sakuya may also be serving her because Patchouli is Remilia's friend, though she does care for Patchouli personally. In Silent Sinner in Blue, she takes a private moment to watch and smile at Patchouli, who's blissfully unaware as she's researching a new magical breakthrough. Koakuma is simply a fellow employee of the Scarlet Devil Mansion and presumably nothing more. On top of serving Remilia, she presumably serves her younger sister Flandre Scarlet, who is usually not allowed out of Scarlet Devil Mansion due to her emotional instability. However, this is not stated, implied, or depicted in any official work. Someone prepares Flandre's food, which are humans prepared in the shape of pastries and other pleasant things, but it is never stated to be Sakuya. As the head maid, Sakuya has precedence over all the other Fairy Maids of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. She is familiar with every each one and notices any abnormality such as the Three Fairies of Light dressing up as three maids. Due to the poor work productivity of the fairies, Sakuya presumably does most of the work. An advertisement in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red''states that Sakuya interviews for recruiting, so she may have interviewed the majority (if not every) of fairy maids herself. Marisa Kirisame Despite Marisa Kirisame's tendency to "borrow" books from the library, Sakuya has shown on a few occasions (mainly endings) to be quite friendly with Marisa, going so far as to serve her snacks and tea and hiding her from Patchouli. This may explain Patchouli's low "catness" rating in ''Immaterial and Missing Power. Residents of Eientei From the events of Imperishable Night, Sakuya is one of the few people who know that Eirin Yagokoro and Kaguya Houraisanare from the moon, and presumably keeping it a secret. Eirin's profile states Eirin is surprised to see Sakuya, but only Eirin knows why. Sakuya has not shown any abnormal interactions or familiarity with Eirin that could hint at what this is. ZUN's only hint in regards to this can be seen in the section about Konohana-Sakuyahime. Alice Margatroid Ever since Perfect Cherry Blossom, Sakuya attacks Alice whenever either visit each other's house, and for no good reason. Sakuya says she's attacking in Immaterial and Missing Power to release stress. In Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, she says it's to punish Alice for intruding even after Alice has already left. In both cases, Alice thought it was a poor reason. In comparison, Marisa Kirisame and Youmu Konpaku don't even get into trouble when caught intruding in the mansion (in fact, they usually get tea, instead). Cirno Sakuya has trouble understanding why Cirno finds freezing frogs or flowers fun in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, but at least came to understand fairies' recklessness from watching Cirno fight in Touhou Hisoutensoku. Cirno does not want to be a fairy maid. Quotes "Come back two hours earlier." "Your time is mine..." "I've got to at least make you waste a bomb before the mistress gets mad at me!” ”There will be still no way of turning back the hours.” Category:Stage Five Boss Category:Neutral Category:Lunarians